A burglary and the loss of Gary.

As mentioned before, Gary, the Scott was one of my coworkers. He was a good man and a pretty good teacher. He and Korea, however didn't agree. He was always pretty straight forward. If he disagreed with something, he spoke his mind. Needless to say, after a while, he started having problems with the hagwon. After six months, he was gone.

I won't go into more detail than that since I'm writing about my experiences and don't feel it is quite appropriate to spend a significant amount of time and space discussing my observations of a friend/coworker's experiences with Korea.

Anyhoo, a couple of weeks after he left, I was robbed.

One day, I went to work. I left my door unlocked, as I usually did my first year in Korea. I did this because I was under the impression that there was almost no crime here. While I was at work, I heard that one of the other teachers, who lived in the same building had her apartment broken into. After hearing this, I ducked out and went back home to check my apartment. When I got there, my laptop, camera, passport and $10 were gone.

I told my boss, and we saw the police. I filled out some forms and told them what was missing, and I was told that they will try to figure out who the thief was. My boss then gets electronic password door locks installed on our doors. After teaching that day, I noticed that there was a security camera on the corner of my street which wasn't to far from my house. I mentioned this to my boss and supervisor the next day as I thought it could be useful in the investigation.

My supervisor takes me down to the police station to answer some more questions and to mention the camera and file an official police report. While the "detective" was interviewing me and my supervisor was translating, I hear her say "Gary ******" several times, so I stopped her and asked her what she was talking about. She told me that she was giving them Gary's name and information because she thought he was the burglar. I told her that I strongly doubted that he was the thief because he's a decent man and he was in Scotland thousands of miles away at the time. She brushed this information off and began giving the detective more of his information, but then he stopped her and asked me why I didn't think he was the thief. I told him why I didn't think he was the thief and he stopped this line of questioning.

A few days later, my boss pulled me aside to tell me that the police reviewed the tapes from the camera near my apartment and saw a man walking out of my apartment building with my possessions and later entering a car. The license plate was visible, and they were tracking the car down.

I waited about a week for more news and asked my boss if there was any more information. He told me that the police couldn't find the thief and that they probably never would. Later that day, I saw a police officer driving an elderly woman home from the grocery store.